Imac G3 adaptation?

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Imac G3 adaptation?

hi everybody,
I have an imac g3 crt 400 mhz just with a cd slot load. I would like to instal a combo drive on it(cdrw-dvd) as I know that drivers for an slot load aare dificult to find and expensive in comparason with the price of those old machines, I am woundering if would be possible to install a normal Ide cdrw/dvd combo drive on it. I opened my imac and it seams to have enought internal space to do an instalation,of course I wold need to cut also a bit of the front panel of the imac, but if I would cut the flex cable that original has 50 pins to use just 40 pins for the ide drive i guess it can work,I have also instale and power extention also to provide energy to the ide drive. the only problem is that I dont know if the ide drive is compatible with the imac, does anybody knows or have done something like that before? As I am not intrested to use a external drive if that works would be great. If the ide is not compatible does anybody know if any other combo slot load from ibook would work?
Thanks

Power Mac G4, Mac OS X (10.3.5)

Posted on Jul 29, 2006 2:35 PM

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Answer 1

mrtotes

Level 6

11,836 points

Jul 29, 2006 3:00 PM in response to glaucotulio

The slot drive is also IDE - but as it's a slim laptop drive I don't fancy your chances of fitting a full size 5.25" drive in there - they are a lot bigger and as you've already identified have differing cables.

A drive taken from an iBook may well work. It's worth checking the drive database on xlr8yourmac.com for details.

However, if you actually want a drive to use rather than this project buy a new external drive or a new combo drive

mrtotes

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Answer 2

glaucotulio Author

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Aug 12, 2006 12:37 PM in response to mrtotes

Thank you for your response. I have done successfully the changes adaptation that I planned. Right now the Imac is working with a conventional cdr/rw Dvd driver. As I wrote before I cut the 50 pin cable and I just use 40 pins. I Cut the imac panel , took off the cdrom drive, the hard disk the caddy and I have got a lot of space, it looks and work well the only problem is the hard disk, that I have no space left inside of the imac.I decide to screwled it on the plastic box of the imac, and it is working fine. It is not a very professional solution, but definitely a very cheap and efficiently solution considering the price of and old crt imac g3 and the costs to upgrade with expensive original parts.

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Answer 3

glaucotulio Author

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Aug 17, 2006 10:59 AM in response to glaucotulio

As I wrote above the imac is working fine. I am just concerning now about the hard disk caddy that I have to take off. It is writem on it. :"X-Ray Warning this product includes critical mechanical and electrical parts which are essential for x radiation safety. For continued safety, replace critical components indicated in the service manual only with exact replacement parts given in the part list. Operanting high voltage for this product is 26Kv at minimun brightness. Refer to service manual for measurement procedures and proper service adjustments. HON HAI Ind.Co.,Ltd."
I have take off the hard disk caddy and the aluminium cage from the botton part of the imac in order to create internal space. everything is conected in a very safe way. I am just woondering if I am exposing myself while I am using the imac to any sort of dangerous Radiation energy that may gives me cancer or anything like this. Could anyone give me any sort of explation or repplys if any of my concerns makes sense?
Thank you Glauco

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Answer 4

glaucotulio Author

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Aug 18, 2006 8:35 AM in response to glaucotulio

I found the solution by myself.

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Answer 5

Aug 23, 2006 12:01 AM in response to glaucotulio

That's great that you were able to get it to work. I have an iMac 333 MHz (older generation) with dead video. I pulled the non-CRT-related parts out of the case and assemble the parts on a shelf. Connected to a really great 19-inch CRT at 1280x960 (below the "iMac shelf"), it works better than ever.

I even added an extra hard drive on the IDE bus (master/slave). My model iMac has a separate IDE bus for the CD drive. When the original tray-loading CD-ROM drive died, I comtemplated doing what you did, but could not figure it out because the connectors were different. But I found someone selling a slot-loading DVD-ROM drive from a Power Mac G4 Cube on eBay for $10, so I took a chance and tried it. It actually worked. So I have a slot-loading DVD-ROM drive on my headless iMac 333 MHz (it can read DVDs, but it cannot "play" DVD movies).

Here's my question. If possible, can you describe how you made the "adapter" to convert the 50-pin connector to the 40-pin IDE connector? For power, you probably just used a "Y-connector" to split the connection used by the hard drive, is that correct?

Thanks...

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Answer 6

Aug 23, 2006 11:54 AM in response to glaucotulio

Can you post pictures of your modifications?
Thanks

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Answer 7

glaucotulio Author

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Oct 20, 2006 2:41 PM in response to Kenichi Watanabe

It sounds great your modification. I would like so see it.
About my modification. The hardest thing is the changes in the case. But the conections are much simple that you can imagine. You should just buy one 40 pin cable with 3 connectors and replace the original one, with a sandpaper take of the bolt from the connector in this way you can connect it on the board female without any obstruction. You have to connect the cable in the left hand side of the female connector; you should ignore the rest of the pins from the board right hand side, but in order to plug in the 40 pin cable you have to carefully remove 2 pins beside the 40 pins from the board. After that is done you can connect the hard drive that uses 40 pins anyways and at the others connection you can use a standard IDE CDROM DVD drive. The power originally is provide from the pins beside the 40 pins. After the changes you have to make a sort of extension in the power cord that provide energy to the hard drive and connect it into the standard drive.
I will try to put some photos from my motifications on the discussion site.
Your emac maybe not playing movies because of the processor 333mhz. But try to increase the ram memory that my help.

Power Mac G4 Mac OS X (10.3.5)

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Answer 8

glaucotulio Author

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Oct 20, 2006 2:55 PM in response to Sean-Socal

I have some photos here but no ideia how to upload them to this forum.

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Answer 9

mrtotes

Level 6

11,836 points

Oct 20, 2006 3:51 PM in response to glaucotulio

Create a Flickr account (or similar) and then post a link to them.

Or you could send them to someone like MacMod. I'm sure they'd like to see them too.

mrtotes

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Answer 10

Oct 20, 2006 5:48 PM in response to glaucotulio

The 333 MHz iMac is different from your 400 MHz iMac. The slower 233-333 MHz iMacs have two separate IDE connection points on the motherboard. One is for the hard drive and the other is for the CDROM drive. The CDROM drive IDE connection point is for the 50-pin connector. The hard drive connection point is for the standard 40-pin connector.

I think I did what you did on your iMac's single 40-pin IDE connector. I bought an IDE cable with three connectors (for motherboard, slave drive, and master drive). On my iMac, no modifications were needed; the cable just plugs in with no changes. I could have added a CDRW or DVD drive to that cable, along with the hard drive, and it probably would have worked. Instead, I added a second hard drive as "slave" to that cable, with the existing boot drive set up as "master." Therefore, my iMac is a two-hard drive iMac.

The DVD drive that I got from the Cube owner on eBay is connected to that separate 50-pin connection point on the motherboard. I was originally trying to attach a full-size DVD drive to the 50-pin cable, but I could not figure out how to modify the cable or make an adapter, since full-sized drives have separate 40-pin cable and power plug, instead of one 50-pin cable that includes power. But since I got the Cube slot-load DVD drive to work, I did not need to find a solution to attach a full-size drive.

The DVD drive does read DVD data disks fine, but no DVD movie player software would allow movie playback. The software apps I tried (Apple's DVD Player and a free app from Interactual) probably need a G4 or better. I have the max 512MB RAM, so that should not be a problem. If you, or anyone, knows of another non-Apple DVD player app, please let me know.

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Answer 11

zeetog

Level 2

175 points

Oct 21, 2006 6:32 AM in response to Kenichi Watanabe

Hello Kenichi, i don't know if this can solve your problem (DVD playback) but I had a similar problem with my iMac slot loader which only had a CD-RW. I bought an external DVD player/writer but OS X 10.3.9 wouldn't let me use DVD player to watch DVD's as it only works for iMac's internal DVD drive if fitted. I posted all over the place and someone directed me to an old post somewhere (sorry I never kept a record of where but I will have a look and see if I can find it). It was a sort of 'backwards hack' (as slightly older operating systems apparently allowed you to use apples DVD player application with external DVD players) I had to use Pacifist to extract all the DVD files from my original 10.3 Jaguar discs and replace the DVD ones on my iMac. It worked a treat. Now I can watch DVD's on my iMac

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Answer 12

zeetog

Level 2

175 points

Oct 21, 2006 6:43 AM in response to zeetog

Hello Kenichi, here is the address for the article http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20040330171655882&query=DVD+Player

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Answer 13

Oct 21, 2006 12:59 PM in response to zeetog

Thanks for the tip. I gave it a shot, but it didn't work. I don't think my old tray-loader iMac was meant to play DVD movies; there's probably a limitation in the hardware. I'm just happy (and somewhat surprised) that the DVD drive from a Cube actually works and can read DVD disk.

[You should keep that link handy. There are often people here asking how they can get their external DVD drives to play movies with DVD Player.]

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